February 14, 2014

Fortunate Valentines

I'm not very crafty, but we had a little time on our hands yesterday so the kids and I made paper fortune cookie valentines. And now I remember why we stopped making homemade valentines a few years back. The kids totally do not enjoy it. There's a lot of gnashing of teeth and dramatic sighing. It's almost as if elementary school-aged boys don't like love.

Anyway, assembly instructions are here should you feel compelled to torture yourself (I find it's easier not to glue-dot the edges of the circle together but to overlap them loosely and glue-dot everything at the end). The folding part is a little tricky, but you get the hang of it after a while. You, meaning the adult in the group. The kids will have long left the room by then. The printed-out fortunes, which I culled from various sources like this one, are tucked inside on little slips of paper just like their edible counterparts. I kept the sayings on the motivational side rather than anything too emo as I don't want to be sued on Valentine's Day. Not again. Also, I'm the last one to give advice on matters of the heart.

While doing my research, I came across several hilarious fortunes that people have found in actual fortune cookies over the years. Here are some of my favorites:

Tammy, per your suggestion in Wintersweet, I made Whoopie Pies for Valentines Day. I made a trial batch the week before and liked them so much I didn't bother with filling them. Those cookies were still magenta after baking, which is not necessarily a bad thing.

I made them again Thursday night, intending to share with family. All went well with the recipe. It was the oven, totally coated in something from the baked bean pot last weekend. Billows of white smoke when the oven got up to temperature, three times that the smoke alarm went off (which triggers the house alarm and the alarm company).

So these Whoopie Pies were beautiful. Dark chocolate brown, lovely filling. Plus they had a bit of a smoky tinge. We called them the Barbecue Flavor.

I love the cookbook, by the way. Lots of inspiration for winter baking!

Becki: It's funny you should mention the color--I made the whoopie pies a few months back and they definitely had a slight magenta hue, too. Usually, they're just brown. This time, there was a Red Velvet Cake vibe going on, which went over well. Whoever can figure out how to keep that beet-red color going strong in the finished cake instead of using artificial food coloring is going to make a lot of money. (So glad you're enjoying the book!)